


Five Weddings

by cherrysprite



Series: Quarantine Fics [12]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, First Meetings, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Meet-Cute, Slow Dancing, Wedding Fluff, Weddings, Years Later, a lot of weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24102931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrysprite/pseuds/cherrysprite
Summary: Liam should have known something was different about Theo Raeken from the moment he met him, and not just because they manage to keep meeting up at weddings.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken
Series: Quarantine Fics [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691383
Comments: 12
Kudos: 142





	Five Weddings

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd and I wrote it in literally a day, so if there are any major mistakes lmk :)

For as big as Liam’s extended family was, he’d been to a  _ lot _ of weddings in his sixteen years of life. The first one he’d been to barely counted, since he was only a baby and it was his mom and dad, but nevertheless, he’d been going to weddings since he was only months old. The second one was when his mom’s friend got married, and the third, fourth, and fifth ones were when his dad’s friends got married. His parents eventually got divorced somewhere along those lines, which was rather ironic, but it was what led Liam to his sixth wedding experience.

His dad was getting remarried to a woman he’d met a few years back, and Liam was happy for him. He’d stood at the altar with his dad an hour or two before as his best man, which was a title he had never had in a wedding, so it made it at least a little more interesting. 

He’s been through all the motions of a wedding ceremony and the reception, so generally, he was just kind of bored. He thought weddings were a lot more fun when kids were invited, but nobody under the age of fifteen was allowed into this one, and it made the whole thing kind of boring. Usually when there were kids around, there would be some stupid dancing and everyone having fun, but it was mostly adults and Liam was only sixteen, so there wasn’t a whole lot for him to do. He’d kind of wished that he’d missed the cutoff for the age limit, although there probably wasn’t any getting out of his own father’s wedding anyway.

There weren’t a lot of people his age at the wedding, let alone ones he knew, so he was sitting at one of the tables alone as people danced in the reception hall. He checked his phone in the spotty service, finding that he had no new messages to answer, and wondered when this was going to be over.

Someone sat down across the table from him, and he’d expected it to be one of his family members when he looked over. Much to his surprise, it wasn’t - it was another teenage boy who looked as though he’d just accidentally drank something he didn’t know had alcohol in it, according to his wince. “Hey,” The boy said, clearly trying to recover from whatever that was as he set the glass down on the table.

“Hi,” Liam said, mostly just glad to be talking to someone again. “Uh...do I know you somehow?”

“Probably not,” He said. “We’re not, like, related or anything. My mom is friends with both of your parents, I just kind of got dragged along. I’m Theo.”

“Liam,” Liam said in response.

They both looked across the floor of mostly tipsy and drunk adults dancing around, all of them acting like kids. “...It seems kind of unfair that we have to be here and act like adults when they can do all that,” Liam commented, motioning towards his Aunt Lisa, who he’d rather regrettably looked over to see her throwing it back on Liam’s Uncle Rob. Theo half-laughed and half-groaned, nodding.

“I always think weddings are so much better when kids are invited,” Theo said. “The last wedding I was at, one of them spilled a Shirley Temple on the dance floor and it turned into a slip n slide until somebody cleaned it up. I was still young enough to get away with that,” Theo laughed.

“Try the terrible idea of letting the kids have kazoos as party favors,” Liam countered. Theo’s eyes widened at the thought. “That was a headache of a night, but I was a part of it, so…” He trailed, watching Theo’s eyes light up with amusement. “That was like, a year ago. I’m sixteen.”

Theo laughed. “Well, the Shirley Temple slip n slide was a year ago too and I was sixteen, so you’re doing better than me at least.” Theo paused. “...But no offense to your dad or anything, but I would  _ so _ much rather be doing that.”

“ _ God _ yes,” Liam agreed, the two of them laughing together. 

For the rest of the night, Theo and Liam hung out, being the only two teenage boys around. Theo was funny and sarcastic in a way that didn’t seem rude to Liam, who usually got frustrated when people tried to be too cool with themselves, but the effect wasn’t the same with him. He was easy to hang out with and to talk to as they both got sugar rushes from virgin drinks and snuck in a little alcohol they stole off tables here and there. They were a little too out of it to get each other’s numbers and stay in touch, so when Liam woke up remembering the wedding, he had chalked it up to just being a fun night. 

He still talked about it to Mason though, wondering every so often who Theo was, but he slipped his mind eventually.

+++

“...Fancy seeing you here...” A raspy, slightly cautious-sounding voice said behind him at another wedding three years later. Liam turned around to see if he was imagining things, his eyes widening in surprise when he saw that Theo was there. He looked almost just the same as he did when he was seventeen now that he was twenty, save for a little more muscle and facial hair, which made the shock of seeing him again all the more intense. He felt like he was getting a blast from the past.

“Oh my God,” Liam laughed breathlessly, smacking the guy on the shoulder just to make sure he was real. He’d forgotten about the guy - Theo, he thought his name was? - in the last few years, but it was all coming back to him now. “Dude, no way.”

“Who are you related to now?” Theo asked jokingly. Liam shrugged.

“I’m not even sure, probably a distant cousin. Small world, huh?” He said, still in disbelief. “How have things been going for you, man?”

They talked like old friends, not like two guys who had met once before. Weirdly enough, it was just as easy to talk to Theo as it was the first time they’d met, but Liam wasn’t complaining. Although he’d come with a date to the wedding this time, his girlfriend Hayden, he was still welcoming to anyone he could talk to. Theo seemed to feel the same.

Hayden walked over to them from where she had been getting a drink from the bar. “Hey,” She said, leaning on Liam’s shoulder. Theo looked at her in surprise and something else that Liam couldn’t place. “Who’s this?”

Hayden hadn’t been around in Liam’s life when he’d met Theo, and he’d since forgotten about him by the time he met her. “This is Theo,” He introduced, Theo giving her a small wave. “I actually met him once at a different wedding, it’s kind of funny, actually.”

“Hmm,” She said absently, nodding. She clearly didn’t think it was as funny of a coincidence as Liam did. “So are you guys, like, cousins or something?”

“Oh, no,” Theo objected pretty quickly, making Liam snicker. “My parents just know more of Liam’s family than I thought, apparently.”

“Oh. Cool,” Hayden said again. Liam got the sense that she wasn’t that interested in talking to Theo, but he didn’t want to leave. It would be nice to catch up with him, now that the opportunity had arisen. It was stupid, but he kind of felt like he should. 

“Do you want to sit down with us?” Liam asked, nodding towards their table and ignoring Hayden’s badly-hidden rolling eyes. “Catch up a little?”

Theo nodded. “Yeah, sure. Let me just find my date, wherever he went off to…” He trailed, looking around the place until he saw him at the open bar. 

The four of them sat down together, Liam, Hayden, Theo, and his date Harris, and it was just like old times apart from both of their dates being there and being bored. 

Theo was actually a pretty interesting guy now that he was older, and Liam thought he would have liked to talk to him more than just at passing weddings. He was still polite but sarcastic when he wanted to be, and it was refreshing. Most of the people in Liam’s life didn’t have a sarcastic or dry bone in their body, so it was something Liam had learned to appreciate. Theo seemed to feel the same way about Liam too, because they kept the conversation going for a pretty long time.

As they were both walking out to the parking lot with their respective dates, they vowed to keep in touch that time. “You’ve got to tell me more about that biology stuff,” Liam said as Hayden was tugging him along into the car, waving his phone that now had Theo’s number in it at him. Theo grinned and nodded, and that was the last they saw of each other for awhile.

Hayden sat in the passenger seat of the car with her arms folded and gaze focused out of the window. She did  _ not _ seem happy. “What?” Liam asked when she sighed softly. Hayden rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Seriously, what is it?”

“You could’ve said that you wanted me to leave you alone with Theo,” She huffed, rolling her eyes again. Liam raised an eyebrow. “Was there something between you two?”

“What? No,” Liam said incredulously. He hadn’t even thought about that. Maybe he had had a little bit of a passing crush on Theo when he was sixteen and still kind of a dork, but they had both been there with different dates that night, anyway. Hayden looked unconvinced, guarded. “I told you I met him once three years ago at my dad’s wedding. There was literally no time for me and him to have ‘something.’”

“But if there was time, you would’ve?” Hayden asked him. Liam was baffled. Hayden was always asking him all types of weird questions he never knew how to answer, but he’d never seen her this insecure about some random guy. “Because Theo’s date wasn’t happy either. He was flirting with you.”

“And clearly, I didn’t notice,” Liam said slowly, starting the car so they would have more of a reason to drop the subject. “Are you going to be weird about this forever?”

“Will you just drive?” Hayden snapped. Liam sighed and pulled out of the parking lot for a tense ride back to their hotel.

+++

Liam had grinned and taken his phone out immediately after receiving an invitation to another wedding in the mail, and this one was more exciting than any of the other ones. This one read “You’re invited to the marriage of Drew Tailor and Tara Raeken,” a familiar name. He took a picture of it and sent it to Theo over text, who responded with a single smiley face. 

A lot of things had changed since the last time Liam had gone to a wedding and seen Theo. At first, each other’s numbers sat unused in each other’s phones. Liam had been confused at first as to why Theo never texted even though he had been the one to make sure they kept in touch, but he found out a few months later that it was because of Harris. Hayden had been right in saying that Harris wasn’t happy about Theo and Liam either, because he and Theo had apparently gotten into an argument similar to Hayden and Liam’s that ended in the promise that Theo wouldn’t reach out. He’d apologized for never texting and explained what happened, but that he and Harris broke up and that he hoped he hadn’t screwed things up. They’d been texting ever since then, but this wedding would be the first time they saw each other in person in a long while.

As for Hayden, she had broken up with him only about a week after the wedding, so Liam hadn’t seen her in years. Now that he was twenty-three and Theo was twenty-four, he felt a whole lot more grown up, aided in part by Hayden breaking up with him. He’d been mostly single for years, learning how to be an adult on his own out of college, so he felt a lot more ready to go to a wedding. He didn’t even mind that he didn’t have a date.

He didn’t know Theo’s sister that well, so the invitation had mostly been of Theo’s power, but it was a beautiful ceremony anyway. Theo was one of Drew’s groomsmen, and he glanced over at Liam every so often during it. Liam caught his eye almost every time, as far as he knew, and made some subtle dumb face at him that made Theo grin each time.

Tara’s wedding was truly a fun one to be at, especially the reception. Kids were allowed at this wedding, but there weren’t that many, so there was just enough chaos to entertain everybody, and the music was good. “I talked her out of booking a jazz band,” Theo said over the loud music that they were bumping their heads to. Liam widened his eyes at him gratefully. Something Theo and Liam had in common was their mutual aversion to cilantro.

As he looked at Theo bob his head to the music as they got food, Liam knew that there was definitely something different about this wedding. He’d only seen Theo in person twice before, but he really knew him now, and he was important to him. They had texted every day, and stayed up with each other into the early hours of the morning just talking about nothing, and that meant something to Liam. There weren’t a lot of people he’d lose sleep over, and without realizing it, Theo had become one of those people.

Only ever seeing each other once every few years kind of skewed things a little. It gave Liam a lot of time to think, for one thing, about the things Hayden said about “having more time.” It gave Liam a lot of time to start getting excited every time he got a notification, hoping it was a text from Theo, and grinning to himself when it was. A lot of time to find anything Theo said either important or funny. Theo living so far away, two hours North of Beacon Hills, was the only thing that Liam could think of to calm himself down when things got a little too good.

Because Theo was just a guy at a wedding when it came down to it, and that was what Theo knew him as. No matter how much of an unfortunate, strong, unrelenting crush he’d gotten himself invested in with him. 

He reminded himself of this as they sat down at their table, both starting to eat the snacks as they watched the other guests dance, and it felt like the first time they’d met. Neither of them were big dancers themselves, so it surprised him when Theo got up from the table and held out a hand. “Come on,” he said, leaving no room for Liam to do anything other than look at him with confusion, then amusement as he pulled him onto the dance floor.

Theo wasn’t bad at dancing or anything, but the absurdity of seeing this dance-hating man move to the beat made Liam laugh. “You makin’ fun of me?” Theo asked jokingly, grinning at Liam, who shook his head.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Liam said, trying not to lose rhythm. “Didn’t know you were a star dancer.”

Theo smiled wider and made a point of it then to be bad at it, which made Liam laugh harder. 

The funny moment only lasted a few seconds, because the song ended and transitioned into something a lot slower. Tara and Drew both got up to dance to the slow song, and since Liam wasn’t there with a date, he was about to go back to their table to wait it out. Instead, Theo held an arm out in front of him to block his way. “Nope,” He said, his grin still there but holding something a little different. He pulled Liam back in closer by his hip, his other hand falling on the other. “We’ve been to three weddings together now and we still haven’t danced together once.”

“We just did,” Liam reminded as Theo moved Liam’s hands to be on his shoulders. Theo raised an eyebrow and smirked.

“Are you really complaining?”

Liam realized then that Theo was right; why was he actually  _ complaining _ about this? Liam shut up and adjusted his hands on Theo’s shoulders, letting him pull him close like the other couples dancing. 

It was awkward at first, but that was all because of Liam’s internal freakout that had him sweating under his suit. _Theo was there, and he was dancing with him! Slow dancing!_ He should feel like he was in a dream, but he was afraid to mess up with every move he made. Slow dancing felt a lot more simple when there was no way he was going to embarrass himself in front of someone like Hayden, but Theo was both someone he wanted to impress and someone he knew he might not see again. 

“You know,” Theo said quietly, breaking the silence. “I actually got a job offer in Caramel City,” He mentioned, sounding casual. “That’s not too far from where you live, is it?”

_What???_ “Only fifteen minutes,” Liam said, trying not to seem too breathless. He cleared his throat. “S-so, were you...considering it?”

Theo sighed. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t really know that many people in the area, but there is one that I know I’d like to see more of. So if he wants, I was thinking of taking it. I’d move into an apartment somewhere close and we’d finally be able to get to know each other even better.”

Liam swallowed. Theo pulled back to look at him, a small smile on his lips. “Y-yeah?” Liam asked. Theo nodded, his eyes flicking from Liam’s to his lips.

“Yeah,” He whispered, and that was all that was left before he closed the distance.

  
And Liam was ready for it - his hands immediately came off Theo’s shoulders. One of them cupped Theo’s cheek and the other held onto the back of his neck as their lips danced together, his knees going weak. Theo kissed better than any of the times Liam had imagined it. He was soft and smooth about it, but just firm enough to make Liam dizzy. He was holding him there just right, and Liam felt like he was melting.

He took it a step further, just because he couldn’t help it anymore, and licked across the seam of Theo’s lips. The moment Theo licked into his mouth, getting the hint, Liam made a needy noise that made them break away, panting. “T-take the job,” Liam whispered, and Theo nodded his head.

Liam found himself a split second later being pulled out of the reception hall and into the empty men’s bathroom, which he would have avoided before, but he was desperate to have Theo’s hands on him now. 

That’s how Liam hooked up in a bathroom for the first time in his life, Theo shoving him against a hastily-locked door - and how he hooked up in a bathroom for the second, third, and fourth time. This wedding was pretty productive.

+++

Theo didn’t require an invitation to the fourth wedding they went to, since he was going as Liam’s official plus one. Liam couldn’t be happier, and not just because of Theo being his date. It was his mother’s wedding this time, finally marrying the man that she was meant to be with. 

Liam was honestly kind of proud of himself for how far he had come. Ten years ago when he was at his father’s wedding, he was a lot less mature about things, and it was hard to accept that his parents were both moving on from each other. He thought then that in a perfect world, his mom and dad would stay married forever like they were “supposed” to be, but since then, Liam had grown up and accepted that life wasn’t perfect; it was only as perfect as you made it. Now that Liam’s mom was happy, he was too.

In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever seen his mom so happy to be at a party. She was normally quiet and polite in public, leaving the funny stuff for her home, but she was going pretty hard at the wedding reception. She was clearly excited to be married, and Liam was excited for her.

Theo seemed to think the same. “I never knew your mom was such a partier,” He said as they watched her take a shot, which was admittedly something Liam had never seen at a wedding before. His knee was bouncing up and down in an almost nervous manner, but Liam chalked it up to a sugar buzz from their tradition of getting as many sugary drinks as they could.

“Me neither,” Liam admitted, kissing his boyfriend on the cheek. It felt so much nicer being at a wedding with Theo now that they had finally gotten together, since before, the atmosphere had been laced with a kind of uncertainty. Now, Theo was holding his hand like a vice, which he definitely wasn’t complaining about.

It also meant that he got to slow dance with him and not have it be a surprise. They did it without getting so excited about it that they had to make a detour for a bathroom rendezvous, because even Liam had enough class not to do that at his mother’s wedding, but there was still a certain tension to it. 

Theo had been acting a little weird all night, but he said he was fine, so he believed him. Most of his concerns died away when Theo stood up and asked him to dance, holding out his hand just as he had at the last wedding. Liam nodded and followed him onto the dance floor, the two of them dancing to the first song that came after the bride and groom’s first dance.

Other couples joined them to dance as well, and Liam looked into his boyfriend’s green eyes and smile. To think that they had met ten years ago and had only just started dancing for three was crazy to him. Theo kissed the smile off his lips.

Theo was as smooth as he could be on the dance floor, his hands on Liam’s shoulders while Liam’s were on his waist, but there was something he had to do.

Liam felt Theo’s hand fumbling around slightly with his own, so he thought he was trying to hold it, but he felt something cold slip up one of his fingers. When he realized what finger it was on, he gasped and looked up at Theo, who had one finger over his lips but a smile on his face. He’d proposed without any words, already knowing Liam would say yes, and God, did he. He covered his mouth as tears threatened to spill from his eyes and nodded almost frantically, looking at the ring that had been silently slipped onto his ring finger. “I told Jenna about this awhile ago,” Theo admitted with a whisper when Liam calmed down a little. “I wanted to take us back to where we first started, but I didn’t want to steal her thunder, so…”

And okay, maybe Liam wasn’t classy enough not to go have sex in the bathroom. It was for old times’ sake.

+++

Then came the most important wedding of all, just a few months later.

They’d based it around the first day they met, exactly ten years after Liam’s father’s wedding. It emulated most of the other weddings they’d been to together, but this one had a whole monologue involved, courtesy of Liam’s best man Mason.

“My first memory of Theo was Liam at sixteen years old, talking about this really cute guy he met at his father’s wedding...and then another, and another, and another…”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> This was inspired by a trip down memory lane and looking at old pictures of weddings, so I thought I'd go ahead and write something sort of like it. I hope you enjoyed!!
> 
> Comments are always appreciated :)


End file.
